In our October 6 show, reading is fundamental

The entire political media, since Wednesday night’s presidential debate, has been doing plenty of reading. Mostly of President Obama’s twitches, pauses, umms, ahhs, looks down, looks up, all in an effort to understand every single one of his missed opportunities in his first encounter with his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. But for all the Thursday morning quarterbacking, perhaps the best evaluation of the debate was written before it even took place.

Alec MacGillis, writing about Romney’s biggest strength and weakness on Wednesday morning in The New Republic:

In debates, Romney loses this affect. He snaps to attention and he’s firing on all cylinders, because he feels challenged: put simply, he is amongst his fellow 1 percenters, where he feels most comfortable, and he wants to show his wits and win the exchange.

it is arguable that Romney considers himself not simply equal to the President, but quite superior. It doesn’t take a lot of reading to understand that. Obama is no mere hoi polloi, mind you; he did make a point of speaking directly to him. But what is key is that the President didn’t exploit Romney’s biggest flaw, according to MacGillis: the etch-a-sketchitude of his positions. And as a result, President Obama made his biggest mistake – he made the alternative more palatable to America.

To start off today’s show, Melissa will offer her read of the debate, and yesterday’s positive jobs news. Other topics we’ll get to today include Romney targeting Big Bird, the third grade (yes, literally), and what education researchers call the “Matthew Effect.” Melissa will also kick off another edition of This Week in Voter Suppression!™, one which will carry particular import for out-of-state college students looking to vote nearby their campuses. Oh, and Melissa will offer her response to this nonsense George Will wrote, and delve into the “angry black man” stereotype which the Drudge/Carlson/Hannity triumverate tried to bait America into buying about the President the day before the debate.

Guests will include:

Ari Berman, contributing writer for The Nation and author of “Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics.”

As always, folks – be sure to interact with us during the show here in the comments of this post, on Facebook, and on Twitter, using the hashtag #nerdland. We look forward to having you join us at 10am ET on msnbc!